


what I love misses me, and calls me in

by blippy



Category: Darkwing Duck (Cartoon 1991), DuckTales (Cartoon 2017)
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Blood and Injury, Established Relationship, Families of Choice, Fluff, Found Family, Gen, Hospitals, M/M, Mallad-McQuack Family, Mild Hurt/Comfort, can be read as human au cause im a coward, emetophobia warning, not like crazy tho just a couple of mentions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-19
Updated: 2020-05-19
Packaged: 2021-03-02 21:14:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,834
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24263434
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blippy/pseuds/blippy
Summary: Drake doesn't wake up in an alley, for once, and he's got one person to thank for that.
Relationships: Drake Mallard/Launchpad McQuack
Comments: 8
Kudos: 120





	what I love misses me, and calls me in

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings for: Hospital setting, broken bones, a single case of throwing up, and some light medical descriptions of wounds. Everything turns out okay though, and none of it is particularly in depth. 
> 
> Title is from the poem On the Back Porch by Dorianne Laux

Consciousness interrupts him with a cold wet thing on side of his face. Drake swats at it, more than a little angry at the rude wake up, but finds it much harder than usual to raise his arms, or to open his eyes at all for that matter. If he had his right mind about him, he would assume that he’s not, in fact, curled up on his cali-king bed, wrapped in a duvet and a blanket, pillows stolen from LP’s side, but that would just be ridiculous. It must be one of Gos’ awful, terrible, evil pranks made to torment her poor, weak, long suffering father. He settles back, hoping that if he ignores the pressing urgency to wake for long enough he can catch another couple of hours of sleep before he has to go on patrol. The cold wet thing, a cloth, he figures, moves and he finds himself missing the pressure for a reason he can't access right now. A low familiar mumble happens above him and though he can’t quite place who it is, his heart settles at the sound. 

He’s being moved, so deductive reasoning means that he’s probably not in bed, or home at all. Panic rises in his chest, the motion jarring something in him, and he suddenly notices the throbbing headache he has, the tangy taste of metal in his mouth and … oh boy. His arm is definitely broken. His elbow feels all tight and funny, like someone forced a puzzle piece in the wrong way. He’s shuffled up onto something a lot softer than whatever he was lying on before. He groans, internally, or externally, if the reaction of that soft-familiar-heart voice is anything to go by;  
‘Hey… hey now DW, relax, I gotcha’  
  
The tension and panic that had been puddling in his chest leaves in a rush, and he sighs, shakier than he’d like. He forces his eyes open, but can still only manage a squint against the backlit shadow in front of him. Launchpad is haloed in white light, downright angelic, and isn’t that just appropriate, poetic even, if you’d asked him on a better day, where his mouth was moving properly and his brain not feeling like it was being forced out through his eye sockets. 

‘Hey…. hey, Drake’, LP’s brows are furrowed, but he’s smiling, cautious and wobbly, as he presses a new wet cloth up to the side of his face, oh. That’s definitely bleeding a lot.

‘Buh-,’ Drake starts, not the syllable he wanted to make, but okay, it’s something.

He tries again, only to feel something rattling around in his mouth. He spits out a hunk of tooth. He knows the whole thing should shock him more right now, but he really can’t seem to care. He benignly hopes SHUSH covers dental work.

‘It’s okay, you don’t have to say anything,’ LP says, eyes soft like he didn't just witness a fully grown man dribble half a tooth down his front like a toddler.

Drake desperately wants to say something though, to iron out that little crease in between Launchpad’s eyebrows. Wants to make sure that he knows; Darkwing will be getting back up from this one, that Drake is fine. So he tries again; raising a floppy, non broken arm to say hold up, wait a minute, bear with me for a second;

‘Hiya handsome,’ He snorts, slapping an uncoordinated hand to LP’s cheek, probably a little harder than he wanted, and oh, wow, he is absolutely covered in ash, and he definitely has a concussion. 

LP giggles, a little hysterical, blinks hard and tilts his head backwards for a moment. He exhales hard through his nose.  
‘Hey,’ He replies, gentle as anything, glassy eyed and grinning.

That’s better, Drake thinks.  
‘That's better,’ Drake says, just staring at LP for a moment, thumb stroking his cheek ‘OK, ok, let's ...’ 

His head is still throbbing, but he makes a pretty good attempt to sit up, before the room around him morphs and twists as he keels over into Launchpad’s chest. Which is, all things considered, not a total loss. 

‘Take it easy,’ Launchpad says, reapplying the pressure to the jagged cut that is now burning along Drake’s temple. ‘You don’t have to get up, it’s all sorted, we got ‘em’

That’s right. The bomb, the one that was meant to just bring the one building down, some insurance scam gone wrong. Bulba’s henchmen had done a bad job of setting up the charges and threatened every structure in a fifty foot radius. They’d gotten rid of the major explosives, but the smaller supporting ones had started to blow before they could make it out. He remembers that much, before his memory fades back into static. 

‘Where are we?’ Drake asks, pressing his head further into LP’s chest, the pressure relieving the tension of his headache a little. This is so much nicer than waking up in an alley alone. 

‘Thunderquack,’ he continues, reading the next question on Drake’s mind ‘The blast threw you into a wall, you caught it elbow first’

‘Yeah?’ He grimaces, that explains the wrongness he’s feeling in his arm, ‘I’m gonna be honest big guy, I really, really don't want to look at it,’

‘Yeah, it…uh... doesn't look great’ Launchpad winces, eyes drawn grimly to his elbow.

He’d been hoping, against all facts, that it was just some bruising, maybe a dislocation. He attempts to move it again, flexing his fingers, turns his wrist skywards but before he can even think about completing the action his entire arm blooms into a burst of pain that sends him reeling. He forces himself back into the seats of the plane, away from LP, pushing into the leather to ground himself, dazed. The lights above them become newly blinding, and his vision turns blue and purple. Everything lurches forward, like the whole city has just been drawn out from under him, heat climbs his spine while his blood turns ice cold, bile rising in his throat. 

‘I’m going to throw up now,’ He says, flinging the door open and spitting dinner all over the pavement.

His head swims, staring at the metal base of the Thunderquack, the sickly yellow lighting from the streetlamps bouncing off the wet asphalt below. Launchpad leans over, holding him up and stable when he threatens to topple straight out of the door to the pavement below. He’s still got an arm reached up, holding the cloth to the side of his face. Even though it's turned lukewarm, it still feels nice. Last time he'd had a concussion, it was from a stupid fall during a motorbike stunt scene, and all he'd gotten was a half hour in a dark room and two ibuprofen. Drake tries to wriggle his way into the safety of the backseat again, but ragdolls when LP puts a guiding hand at his side to lower him down.

'Where'd I be without you?' He asks, too busy dealing with compartmentalising the pain that is wringing him through to feel bashful about the level of sincerity he's operating on right now, 

'Well, right now? Probably lying on the ground, DW' 

He can only snort in response, and even that hurts. Launchpad goes to work after that. He moves with a practiced calm, cleaning up the cut on his forehead, disinfecting the area before pulling it together with a few butterfly stitches, covering the wound with adhesive gauze. He does it so gently Drake doesn’t even notice that he’s finished. Though that could be the delirium talking. He pulls out one of those emergency slings out from a different first aid kit under the pilot’s seat. Drake had no idea it was even there, a surge of fondness bubbles up in his chest, his partner is so smart. Launchpad sits him back up, Drake lets himself get pulled forward and around, spots in his eyes protesting too much to fight for autonomy and when Launchpad let’s him go, his arm is in a makeshift sling tied around his neck.

‘Don’t go to sleep yet, babe’ He says, shaking his shoulder gently ‘You know you have a concussion, here’ He holds a bottle of water up to him. Drake takes it, unsure that he could maneuver someone else helping him drink. The water is so sweet in comparison to the metal, gunpowder taste in his mouth right now. He rinses out his mouth, spitting again out the door, and takes a few good gulps. Even just that makes him feel a lot better. 

‘Now, do you want to go to the hospital as Drake, or do you want to go to hospital as DW,’ Launchpad asks, open and honest, while he packs up what's left of their first aid kit.

‘Y’know, I would normally get tetchy about this bit,’ Drake grimaces, head lolling on the back of the seat, ‘Y'know, with the whole getting back up thing, and the secret identity thing, but I would really, really love some of the good painkillers right about now, and I don’t think the regular hospital will give them to me’

‘You got it, SHUSH central it is,’ LP smiles, satisfied and tender, taking a moment to just stand back and breathe. Drake can actually open his eyes to look at Launchpad properly now, for the first time in at least three hours. His hat is gone, probably in the front seat somewhere, he’s breathing in, deep and calm, and he keeps running his hands down the fur of his jacket absentmindedly, which is sporting a new, wide scorch mark just below the pocket. He has concrete dust and debris in his hair, along with a purple bruise on his cheekbone. Overwhelmed, Drake tugs LP down by the shirt collar, gathering his good arm around his neck and pressing a chaste, hard kiss to the side of his mouth.  


‘I didn't want to kiss you proper,’ He slurs, ‘Cause I did throw up like, ten minutes ago, ‘n that would be gross’  


Launchpad hugs back, laughing. 

Everything is pretty blurry after that. He doesn't remember making it to SHUSH Central. There’s a lot of different rooms, a lot of different doctors. He gets three different lights shot into his eyeballs that make him want to puke all over again, the second he gets the okay from the nurses he finally passes out in the wheelchair they forced him into at the front door.

When he comes to the second time, he’s in an actual bed. According to the thin high windows that run the length of the room, it’s pretty late, or very early and he’s in a SHUSH ward. Reassuring, no mad science labs, not on some kind of alien ship, better than an alley, by far. He’s feeling better than he has in a few hours, a good night's (days?) sleep dulling all the aching the painkillers couldn't. His arm is heavy, wrapped in a lilac-grey cast all the way up to his shoulder, which isn't ideal. He really didn't want to have to take time off for this.

Besides his Darkwing getup piled on the chair beside him, there’s no indication that anyone else is here. That is, until he notices a heavy weight against his leg. A red mop of hair, tufted and wild, peeks out of the blankets. Gosalyn.

His heart swells seeing his baby girl look so small and sweet and innocent. She’s in one of Launchpad’s hoodies, it’s more of a blanket for her than clothes, sandwiched between him and the bed guard. She’s dozing away, Gamebird in her lap, pen loosely clutched in her hand. Guilt claws up at him, how he’d been AWOL for long enough for her to collapse exhausted like this, in a new, weird place. He shoves it back down, too overloaded to unpack that right now. He’s just happy to see her.

He eyes at the pen in her hand. He checks his cast. Oh. Yeah, that’s fair.

It says ‘BIG DUMMY’ in her blocky handwriting, and there's a crude drawing of Gos, angry and spitting flames. He’s pretty lucky she didn’t get carried away enough to cover the entire thing with a full comic strip on how he’s a big doodoo head or whatever. Though, he has a suspicion that by the time the cast comes off, he’ll be sporting a few more panels of insults. He shifts, as carefully as he can, to reach over to his phone charging on the bedside table. The clock reads 8pm, Thursday, it’s been a full day since dealing with Bulba’s Lackeys. He’s been out for a few hours, definitely, he remembers coming to for a while after they’d reset his arm, but he was too out of it on morphine to really acknowledge where or who he was. Besides a vague memory that his arm had swollen so fat that they’d had to cut his shirt sleeve off… Did... did he cry about that?  


‘You did cry about that, Pops told me’  


Drake startles so hard that he smashes his cast into the bedside table, the resounding vibrations making his teeth hurt, fresh pain cascading down his shoulder, .  


‘You know talking to yourself is the first sign of madness Dad,’  


‘Really? I thought it was having a daughter’  


She grins, unrestrained, clambering up on her knees over his legs throw herself round his shoulders.  


‘I’m sorry for scaring you, pumpkin,’ He says,  


‘Who said I was scared?’ She replies, but clings onto him nonetheless, ‘Your concussion wasn't even that bad,’  


‘Oh yeah? You wanna see the other guy?’  


'I think staring at some bricks would be pretty boring’ She leans back, resettling in his lap so he can actually see her face, ‘Launchdad went to get some food,’  


‘Oh?’  


‘Yeah I had to make him, he wouldn’t stop being moony eyed and watching you sleep like he was in some telenovela… or like, Dracula,’ she adds after some consideration,  


Drake snorts at the comparison.  


‘Dracula can’t star in his own telenovela now?’  


‘You and I both know that Dracula would have too many demands to ever be hired as an actor, even if it would be the best show on the planet,’ She quips, rolling her eyes like it's the most obvious thing in the world. 

They fall into a comfortable silence, Gos playing with the toggles on the hoodie she’s wearing, tying and untying the ropes, Drake just watching her. She’s going to need a haircut soon, before she takes the scissors to it herself, again, and the last time he’d taken her to practice at the rink her skates were getting a bit too small, even though he swears he only bought them a few months ago. He sighs, she’s getting too big, too quick already. Like she knows the internal distress her Dad is going through right now, Gos turns to rest her head on his chest, leaning into him, picking up her discarded Gamebird from the side of the bed and booting it up. He runs his good hand through her hair, being careful not to snag any of her curls.

Across the room, the door slides open so gently, Drake only just notices. A tall shadow cuts into the dimmed room from the hallway.  


‘Hey, big guy,’ He says, not being able to stop the overflow of fondness spill out into his voice, and not really wanting to, either. Launchpad is here. He’s clean again, and the bruising on his cheekbone has turned a weird grey green, his burnt jacket traded out for one of his threadbare pullovers. A wide grin ruptures on his face as he strides over, a little faster than entirely needed. He's carrying a plastic shopping bag, and the duffel that usually has a change of civilian clothes in it for Darkwing.  


‘You’re up!’ He says, bouncing on his heels, Drake can’t help but match his energy, flexing his hands outwards, or at least, the best he can round the cast. Gos crawls to the bed guard, feigning interest for the bounty of food and candy she undoubtedly talked Launchpad into getting. Drake leans up out of the bed to grab LP‘s bicep, his arm, his hand.  


‘He’s up!’ Gos repeats, fishing a packet of gummy worms out the bag Launchpad unceremoniously hands to her, going back to her game, content.  


‘How’re you feeling?’ LP asks, pulling a chair close and leaning into him,  


‘So much better,’ Drake replies, and funnily enough. He does. 

Later, when he’s been discharged, they’ll sit on the back porch of the house, watching for stars. Gosalyn will be sound asleep on the sofa in the living room, snoring unabashedly. And Drake will take Launchpad’s hand, smooth over the scrapes and the scabs, kiss him gentle on the yellow of his bruise, his cheek, his mouth. ‘Thank you’ he’ll say, ‘ for taking care of me, for staying’ and Launchpad will reply, ‘Thank you for letting me,’

**Author's Note:**

> This is the first fic I've ever posted, ever. Please be kind, thank you for reading :)


End file.
